


O What Can Ail Thee, Knight-at-Arms?

by preraphhobbit



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Animal Abuse, Multi, Past Character Death, References to Abuse, mostly book canon compliant, some show references, takes place after arya leaves sandor for dead and he gets taken in by elder brother, this was hard, trigger warnings for like....physical/emotional abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-19 18:32:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19138330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preraphhobbit/pseuds/preraphhobbit
Summary: sandor clegane tries to leave the hound behind.





	O What Can Ail Thee, Knight-at-Arms?

**Author's Note:**

> this is mostly book-canon compliant, taking place after arya leaves sandor for dead. in this version (as in the show and fan theory), he's taken in by the brothers of the quiet isle. you'll notice i do use some lines from the show, though, but its still mainly book canon. mostly conjecture over what his childhood might have been like, and how he deals with his trauma. content warning for violence, death, animal abuse, as mentioned in the tags.
> 
> as of now, this is a two part fic specifically focusing on sandor's childhood, but it has the potential to become something more. maybe.

It is a small island, too small for beasts or anything with bloodlust, so they leave the hound to die on the mainland shore and bring the man across the water. His fever dreams chase him like a smoke. In the hut where they lay him down the walls are licked with flame, the roof a burning bower, and he feels all his memories turn to ash. Without the hound he is forced to recall the man. Who is broken, jagged, and charred. 

“You deserted me,” he tells what lingers for him in the dark, accusingly. 

“No,” says the darkness. “You could not carry me.”

The darkness has grey eyes and brown hair, thick and heavy, scented with bitter smoke and bruised herbs. Three years older than himself. When Mother died she had aged twenty years in the span of a day, ceased suddenly their sojourns into the hills, down to the little river that ran below their father’s keep. It was a gentle, slow-moving river, reedy and green. Enjoyed the sensation of the mud underfoot. She had always wanted to teach him how to swim, but he had always been too timid, too frightened of what might linger in the green murk, snapping things coming after his ankles and toes. While his sister had loved to swim.

Had shouted, “Get in, you!” from halfway to the opposite bank. 

“No, I won’t- what if Gregor comes looking for us?” He danced nervously from foot to foot. His father's brindled bitch, round with pregnancy, stood panting with him. And even the goodness of the sleek mud could not unshoulder the fear from between his shoulders.

“And what’ll he say to me teaching you to swim? We can dog-paddle to the other bank and hide in the rushes.”

Above them ran the road, hardly more than a cart track, that went to the Golden Road, to Casterly Rock and to Lannisport, and a thousand other places whose names he knew but had never seen. The Cleganes being bound to their holdfast. Not noble in the manner of other lords. He could hear no voices nor hoofbeats nor creak of cart, no matter how he strained. And his sister was waiting. Treading water in the middle of her little river. He rubbed the dog's soft, silky ears with his hand.

Told her, "You wait here." And holding his breath, plunged into the water.

An old woman daubed the sweat from his brow with a cloth, water in a bowl steeped with herbs. Her touch cool and soft. Through the glimmer of fever seized her hand at the wrist. 

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

The old woman continued her soft movements. Her roughspun robe moved against his shoulder, his bare neck. The wet touch of her cloth at his throat, running across the tender flesh of his neck. Could not tell if he had moved at all or only imagined it, if his tongue had formed words or he had only wanted it. He said, “Let me die, bitch.” Or imagined he said it.

His sister towed him across the river by cupping her small hand beneath his chin. Felt the steady beating swell of the water moving around her legs as she kicked, moving them silently through to the stony bank, overhung with crabgrass and the roots of little trees that had half-fallen towards the river. Climbed up and lay shrouded in the reeds and grasses. Listened to the hum of insects and the interminable nothingness of a summer afternoon. He had not seen a winter yet. Had no notion that someday the grasses would lie cold and hard beneath a crust of frost, and the flowers stay faded for so long he would forget how they smelled. For now there was only him and his sister in the brush. 

She told of Lann the Clever for the thousandth time. Who stole gold from the sun to make his hair bright yellow. “And now all the Lannisters have gold in their hair,” she told him.

“Addam says Lord Tywin shits gold.”

His sister knocked her knee against his own. “Addam has a foul mouth. You’re too young to talk like that.”

He didn’t care. “Tell me a story about knights,” he begged her. Those being his favourite. Had not the patience for stories of tricksters, witches, grumpkins, or snarks, nor even for the story of his own grandfather who saved Tytos Lannister from a lion and made Clegane a house of its own. Far preferred stories like that of Aegon the Dragonknight, and Brandon the Bloody Blade. Even the romances, he loved. And he loved the tale of Serwyn of the Mirror Shield, who tricked a dragon to save his lover.

“I want to be like Serwyn,” he told her when the story was finished. “I want to be brave and good and-”

“Not all knights are brave and good,” she said, and her voice was full of bitterness. “Some knights are cruel and hard.”

“Like Gregor.”

“Gregor isn’t a knight. He can’t be a knight and inherit Father’s lands.”

“But he wants to be. He says he will be. He says…” There was the way that Gregor laughed when he struck him, the sting of his hand across the lip, like an echo in his own skull. “He says he’ll make all the noble houses respect House Clegane as if we were one of them. That he’ll make them afraid.” And he believes it. For he has spent a lifetime afraid of Gregor Clegane.

“Fear is an ugly thing, Sandor. Even Serwyn was haunted by all the knights he’d slain. It’ll cut your enemies and you too.”

“I won’t do that. I’ll knock them into the dirt and they’ll yield to me.” He pierced the sky with an imaginary blade.

“My little brother.” She ruffled his hair, smoothed it back from his forehead. It had grown too long. He had been dodging the barber’s blade for weeks. “You’ll be a fine knight one day. Good and kind. Ser Sandor the Good, that’s what they’ll call you.”

He remembers that day, of all days, because it was the last she had been alive. And when it had grown too heavy for him he had thrown the memory away as if it did not matter. As if the boy too was dead. He fumbles through the stink of his own wounds for something to grasp. The sheen of her hair. The folds of her skirt. The way her hands made shadows over her embroidery. The sound of her voice signing songs as night drew over the holdfast, and the purple sky grew studded with stars like the tips of silver knives. The thump of the hounds’ tails under the table. _I don’t want to fucking see that._ Their father, half-dozing. “There was a letter today. A raven brought it.” Gregor with his hunting knife over his knees.

“Oh?” How swiftly her hands moved, even in the gloom of the hall. The only light the orange glow of the fire in the hearth.

“From Lord Serrett, over at Silverhall. Seems one of his sons has taken a liking to you.”

“I’m hardly a match for a Serrett.”

“A fourth son. Looking for a holdfast of his own. It seems they’ve heard that our Gregor is aiming to become a ser.”

“So this Serrett boy will marry me and inherit our holdfast, is that it?”

“Unless one of my sons decides to diminish his lofty ambitions and be only a lord of a holdfast.” His gaze was hard and hot. Gregor, never looking up from his knife and whetstone. At ten already had a taste for sharp steel, already stood as tall as a man, already had a face so still it might be chiselled from stone. And it was stony faces that were the most frightening. His sister had gone and kissed them each before retiring to her chambers for the knight. _I said I don’t fucking want to see that!_ Even Gregor. She was two years younger than him. Wasn’t hard, he thinks, to push her over the balustrade of the holdfast’s second story. Wasn’t hard for her body to break on the flags below. He himself had found her.

“Get out of my bloody face,” he swears at the dark. 

“It’s yours,” says the dark. “Yours to carry.”

“I left that behind years ago. It isn’t mine.”

“No man exists without his past, Sandor Clegane.”

“You’re fucking telling me that? I’ve had to wear my past on my face, every damn day, and the whole world sees it. The whole world knows the story of Sandor bloody Clegane.”

“The world knows it, yes. But the world cannot carry your pain for you.”

They buried her next to their mother. Under a yew tree. Such a shame, they said. She’d been so young. Lord Serrett had sent his condolences. He never found out who the fourth son had married in her place. Hadn’t cared either. In six months’ time he couldn’t conjure her face when he wanted, and in a year he’d forgotten her voice, except in dreams. When his father’s brindled bitch had whelped, she’d yielded up six fine pups from her swollen belly, though only two had survived. The rest mangled, skinned, beaten, burnt. All manner of horrors. 

“You need good hounds when there’s lions about,” said his father. His excuse for everything. Had a face like a hound himself, long-nosed and severe, a mouth that never smiled. “Weak dogs...better to kill them off young then waste good meat on a litter of runts.”

“They might have grown.” Picking nervously at his dinner. Gregor had eaten a whole capon on his own, stuffed with mushrooms. Without a word for the whole meal.

“You can’t grow out of weakness, Sandor. That’s for certain.”

Stared at his father over the table with a bitter taste in his mouth. The grease of his capon left a shine on his thin lips. And there was grease on Gregor’s wide, flat hands, around his mouth, which consumed everything that was laid in front of him. In a flaming hut they lay a poultice at his neck with deft, careful hands. He lashes at them, cursing him. Should have left him like that girl had left him. Left him like he’d left her sister. For dead or worse. The poultice stung like poison and his scream was like that of a distant animal. Like one of those dogs when Gregor threw stones at it to make it mean. A rock struck the pup over the eye and made it bleed. Had smelled the hot blood himself- he'd watched, afraid and silent. Knew what happened if he tried to take Gregor's toys away from him. The dog had only one good eye left to him, but it was a good dog. Mean and cruel. Could tear a lion to shreds if Gregor set it on one.

“What the fuck are you doing to me?” Beating at the dark.

“Lay still. It will only hurt for a little while.”

Aye, they’d all said that. Put all manner of potions and poultice on the wreck that was left on his face and said that with time it wouldn’t pain him anymore. That had been a fucking lie. It ached and rang like a struck bell and it crept down his neck and up his skull. 

At least she hadn’t lived to see that. At least she hadn’t smelled it. At least she hadn’t heard him scream. Scream until the smoke of his own flesh choked him, until his throat was raw with his own wailing. Could still hear the sear of himself even now. Could feel the pressure of Gregor’s hand on his right cheek. 

_The pain was bad. The smell was worse. Worst of all was that it had been his brother that did it._

_I don’t want to fucking see that._


End file.
